Fall River City Council wants residents to know it had nothing to do with pay-as-you-throw

Thursday

Jul 17, 2014 at 5:44 PMJul 17, 2014 at 8:43 PM

Blog post by WasteZero, company implementing the program, originally used language indicating that City Council approved plan

Jo C. Goode Herald News Staff Reporter @jgoodeHN

FALL RIVER — A number of city councilors want it on the record — the pay-as-you-throw program is not their idea.

“I want the record to reflect the mayor owns this,” City Councilor Michael Miozza said. “He did not elicit our advice, and he made it clear, regardless of our input, he was going to implement the program.”

It was a recent online blog post authored by WasteZero and made available to the council, Miozza said, that provoked him to come out publicly outside of City Council chambers on the issue.

WasteZero, the company that is managing the program that starts Aug. 4, used language in the blog indicating it was the council that approved the pay-as-you-throw program when it voted for the fiscal 2015.

Miozza said after he contacted management at the company to complain that WasteZero had misrepresented that the council voted to approve the pay-as-you-throw program, it changed the content of the blog to read that the city of Fall River was starting the program after the budget was approved.

Joshua Kolling-Perin, WasteZero’s director of public engagement, declined via email to comment on the content of the initial blog.

City Councilor Raymond Mitchell said he thought that, if the council were allowed to vote on a pay-as-you-throw program, it would be defeated.

But Mitchell’s effort to have the City Council seek a legal opinion outside of the city’s corporation counsel’s office which found the mayor had the legal right to institute the plan, was defeated by his fellow councilors.

“A disaster,” is how council President Joseph Camara described the new program. He said he told Flanagan just that during a budget hearing on June 10.

“It’s ridiculous. I don’t know a city councilor who wants this,” Camara said. “ ... It’s not meant for this city.”

During the budget hearing, Flanagan told the council was the pay-as-you-throw program was “off the table for this council.”

Regarding the WasteZero blog, Camara said he was angered by the company’s statement that the council voted for the pay-as-you-throw program and wanted a written apology from the company for the misrepresentation.

Flanagan said he realizes that the decision to move to the pay-as-you-throw program may be viewed as an unpopular political decision.

“No elected official wants to come out and advocate for a program that comes with a fee,” Flanagan said. “But it was something we had to do.”

Flanagan said he made an effort to expand the landfill, which will shutter in October that will result in a loss of revenue in host fees. The idea was shut down, Flanagan said, and privatizing the city sanitation department didn’t make fiscal sense.

“We had to come up with a solution that made sense and would benefit the day-to-day operations of the department of community maintenance as well as increase recycling,” Flanagan said.

While Mitchell said he’s against the program, Miozza said he isn’t but questions the city’s haste in rolling it out.

“I don’t feel they will be ready when the light switch flips,” Miozza said.

This month, WasteZero and the city kicked off what they call an education campaign, having sent out one mailing explaining the pay-as-you-throw program, with a second mailing plus a sample trash bag to 33,000 residents.

Kenneth Pacheco, director of the Community Maintenance Department, whose department will be overseeing the program, said he disagreed that the city won’t be ready for the Aug. 4 launch.

“Our phones haven’t been exploding, and we’ve had the first mailing,” Pacheco said. “The biggest question we get is when can people start purchasing the bags.”

By Monday, all of the participating retailers will have the bags available, he said.

None of the three councilors said they believe that the program will bring in the predicted $3.5 million in revenue, money that is earmarked to pay firefighters' salaries.

WasteZero and the city claim the program will bring in $2.7 million from the purchase of the trash bags and another $800,000 in savings from the increase in recycling.

Camara said he feels the program “won’t come near” the revenue that is needed to fund the firefighters.

He has already put the administration on notice, Camara said, that he expects to receive monthly data of the tonnage of waste the city hauls to the Fall River Industrial Park landfill and the sales of the trash bags.

Flanagan said he has confidence that WasteZero can help the city reach the projected revenue and noted other cities like Fall River — Brockton, Taunton and Worcester — have successful pay-as-you-throw programs.

The mayor is responsible for the program, for its performance and to the taxpayers, Miozza said. Though he said he has doubts, he wants it to be successful.

“If it isn’t, the mayor is to blame. If it is successful, then he and the administration should be commended,” Miozza said.

Flanagan said he has confidence in both the council members who oppose the program and city residents to work with him to make it a success.

“If pay-as-you-throw is a success, it means success for the city,” Flanagan said.